Edinburgh Fringe magazine Fringepig looks set to close following the election of its founder Liam Mullone as a local councillor.

Mullone, who has frequently performed at the Fringe in the past, announced the news on Facebook. He has recently become increasingly busy with local politics near his home in Devon. He was involved in "a sort of guerrilla anarcho-environmental organisation called Newton Says No, which was mostly about winding up the Conservative executive of our local council. It was fun but felt a bit like throwing pebbles at a tank."

So he decided to stand in the council elections last week to oppose proposals to build new houses in the Wolborough Hills, Newton Abbot, "doubling the size of a small market town that is already struggling....the houses come with no new jobs, no new infrastructure, no new playgrounds and no new health provision." 

His group stood at the council elections and were successful: "3 out of 4 of us got in (the fourth losing out by just 35 votes). My running mate Janet Bradford and I came top of 10 candidates of every political hue, and by a massive majority. So now our job is to make sure the new Lib Dem Executive finds some balls, stands up to the developers and says No. Otherwise they’ll get the same treatment as the Tories."

The bad news is that this time-consuming grown-up position means that he can no longer run Fringepig Magazine, the irreverent publication that comes out during the Edinburgh Fringe. Production for the forthcoming edition was well under way with articles commissioned and advertising sold. "The realisation hit me when trying to make a sofa for a stuffed-toy photoshoot out of a cereal box and burst into tears because it didn’t look right. It felt like I shouldn’t be doing this at my age. Anyway Fringepig wasn’t something I did because it was lucrative (it wasn’t very), or even successful (I would say that it was) but because it was fun and it seemed important, and it maintained a link with people I care about, and my kids were proud of me for it, and I think it’s fair to say it made its point. But it doesn’t have to take over my life anymore.

Also, it became very clear last year that to carry on we would need to go big or go home. An arrangement with Gilded Balloon to become a venue as well as a magazine fell through, and the anarchic style of the thing didn’t attract any big-money advertisers, though a couple of them thought about it.

So I need to apologise to anyone who agreed to write for Fringepig this year, or who has already written. I am especially aggrieved not to be releasing Paul Foot’s ‘Seven Sensible Questions’ to the world. Anyone who has bought an advert, don’t pay for it. Those few that have paid, you’ll be refunded this week."

Perhaps, however, this is not quite the end of Fringepig. "If anyone would like to take it on, I am willing to sell it for the price of a second-hand Vauxhall. You can still feasibly complete it in time for the Fringe, and it comes with easy-to follow directions and 20 beautiful, and only slightly kicked-about distribution boxes."